


Fourth Down

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Crack, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Freeform, Gen, M/M, Other, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 14:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7390534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my theory and I’m sticking to it. </p><p><b>Important Info for the Reader: </b>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is buried in Minstead, amid the New Forest in Hampshire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fourth Down

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2016 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #4, **Horsemen of the Apocalypse:** Let Death, Famine, Pestilence, or War appear in your entry today in some fashion.

“I have you at last.” The figure on the pale horse did not gloat or cackle.  
  
The tall white-haired man tending his beehives did not even look up. “Not today, I think. Do be elsewhere.”  
  
The hooded figure gripped the reins with one bony hand and gestured with the other. “Come with me. Your span has ended.”  
  
Another voice rang out from the cottage. “You’re not wanted here, sir.”  
  
The mounted figure turned to face a man who hobbled over from the cottage, holding a walking stick, and gave him a cadaverous grin. “A wound. Received from your confrontation with my brother in arms.”  
  
“I’ve faced the red horse down, yes.” Not a brag. The same level voice that Death had used.  
  
“And seen the face of Want in that foreign land.”  
  
“The rider of the black horse resides here as well.” The white-haired moustachioed man kept his eyes fixed on the hollow sockets that glowed in their depths. “As does the white horse. I’ve battled those other two comrades of yours in the alleys of London where our lads lived. I brought apples and ham and bread, not just headache powder and catgut and carbolic soap. That work gave me a purpose in those three years when I’d thought he was in your grip.”  
  
The tall gaunt beak-nosed man straightened, holding a honeycomb. The little smile he wore radiated pride and love. “He stole much of your two messmates’ rightful prey out of their grasps.”  
  
The white-moustached man smiled with the same pride and love. “Even as this old fool battled the pestilence of crime and wickedness in this country for decades. And his undercover work made a ghastly war much less ghastly. Do you think we cannot overcome you as well?”  
  
“You are mortal. Therefore you are mine.” The pale horse sidled and nickered at the quavering grip of the bony knees.  
  
“Wrong,” said the beehive-man. “Quite wrong, that first sentence. Therefore the second is false also.”  
  
“Look ahead.” The mustachioed war veteran hobbled to the hive to face the enraged reaper beside his companion. “Look as far ahead as you like. And proudly announce what you see, if you see our deaths.”  
  
So the collector of all that lives looked forward, ably aided by the old father with the scythe who rode so often with him.  
  
A hundred years. A hundred twenty years. Three hundred. A thousand.  
  
More alive than ever, more beloved than ever. Honoured and portrayed and discussed and appealed to, in numbers that would have broken the minds of the original literary agent. Billions who believed, who firmly knew that both lived and were together. Letters by the millions piled up at a door in a London street. Hundreds who visited that door, who hunted the Downs for that cottage and the beehives, who left wreaths at a Swiss waterfall.  
  
Perhaps it was that first Sherlock Holmes Society set up on the Ganymede colony in 2503 that did the deed…  
  
The ghastly steed whinnied and shied like a London cab-horse, and the pale rider fell.  
  
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the fellows on those other horses,” the moustachioed man said, one hand on the tall beekeeper’s shoulder. “Leave us alone. You have no power over us.”  
  
With an enraged screech that sent bees into a tizzy around both men, the figure scrambled back atop his snorting, bucking pale horse and turned its head away from the two. In seconds it was gone.  
  
“I’ve told you before, old chap.” The moustachioed man squeezed the tall man’s shoulder. “We’re doomed to live forever.”  
  
From far over the Downs and into a tiny churchyard in Minstead, a faint sobbing came from one grave.


End file.
